This invention relates to search engines such as those used to locate Internet resources.
The Internet is quickly becoming an important source for various types of information. A seemingly endless quantity of information is available for those with the patience to find it.
Various search engines are available for locating different Internet Web sites relating to specified topics. Generally a user enters a search string, and the search engine returns a list of resources that correspond in some fashion to the search string. The user peruses this list and navigates to different listed resources in an attempt to find one that meets the user""s specific needs.
Search engines such as this generally work by matching keywords provided by the user with words contained in the Web sites themselves. Alternatively, search engines for a single Web site sometimes match user-provided keywords with predefined keywords associated with different resources within the site.
Although search methods such as this are good at finding resources, the relevancy of the resources varies depending on the search strings provided by the user. Furthermore, the search engines often returns tens, hundreds, or even thousands of uncategorized resultsxe2x80x94leaving the user with a significant task of sifting through search result listings to find specific items that might be interesting.
The invention includes a search engine for use with topics that are indexed by keywords or keyword phrases. In response to a user-provided search phrase, the search engine performs several levels of keyword searching, starting with a relatively exact matching search and proceeding with other searches that are increasingly less exact. Each less exact level of searching is performed only if the higher level yields no results.
One level of searching is performed on a phonetic level. The keyword phrases are converted to phonetic representations and are sorted in accordance with a predefined phonetic order. This phonetic order is defined such that similar sounds are located near each other. Furthermore, the predefined order begins with sounds produced at the front of the mouth, and proceeds in order with sounds made further and further back in the mouth.
When searching for a particular search phrase, it is converted to a phonetic representation and is then sorted with the keyword phrases to find its relative location within the keyword phrasesxe2x80x94used the predefined phonetic order mentioned above. Then, any keyword phrases that either match the search phrase or that are neighbors of the search phrase in the sorted order are identified as search results.